Claim to fame

I figured it is time to tell you a little bit about myself and how I got into the business of film making. This is by no means an ordinary story, so enjoy!

After dropping out of university for the second time, I decided it was time to follow my dream and try something else:

I was going to be famous!  The whole world would love me unconditionally and I would get lots and lots of girls. People would chant my name in the streets whilst smiling and crying tears of joy, because they'd caught a glimpse of me in real life. "Ben Reisman! Ben Reisman! We love you!! One picture...please!! Oh thank you, you're my hero!"

Ok, maybe I got carried away a bit, but to be honest I came pretty close. Because on the 17th of August in the year 2007 I became the first and - as far as I know - only Dutch Office Chair Racing Champion in the history of man kind! Quite an achievement and of course my defining moment up until today. :)
If you're interested to see how it went watch the video below. (If you're short on time: the good stuff starts around 3:10 - also make sure you watch the intro)

You can imagine how proud my parents must have been....
I was able to experience this unprecedented heroic moment because I was part of a talent program at a dutch broadcasting company called BNN. Here we learnt how to make television for a young audience and one of the formats we came up with was that I had to become Dutch champion in something...in anything really.
To achieve this goal I participated in all different kinds of weird championships. Also worth mentioning is my proud third place in the Dutch Championships Air Guitar where I performed Red Hot Chili Peppers in a packed Paradiso. I've uploaded all the episodes on my youtube-account for those interested.

Paradiso

Me playing air guitar

As you can imagine I really had a blast and besides that I learnt a lot about making television.
But of course as happens to most people I got older and with that much more boring. Besides, I got way too fat for the orange leotard. I decided I wanted to make stuff that really meant something.  The dream of becoming famous was replaced by the dream of becoming a documentary maker...


....and famous :)